Two studies—one with mice pups and one with tadpoles—show how exposure to light early in life helps organize and refine the circuitry of vision systems.
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David Berson, professor of neuroscience at Brown University, found light exposure can enhance how well mice organize the nerve endings from their left eye and their right eye in an area of the brain where they start out somewhat jumbled. Findings are published in Nature Neuroscience.
Neuroscientists had thought that mammals were unable to see at this stage, but a new type of light-sensitive cell that Berson discovered a decade ago turns out to let in the light.
Meanwhile, Berson’s colleague Carlos Aizenman, assistant professor of neuroscience, co-authored a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience showing that newborn tadpoles depend on light to coordinate and improve the response speed, strength, and reliability of a network of neurons in a vision-processing region of their brains.
“This is how activity is allowing visual circuits to refine and sort themselves out,” says Aizenman. “Activity is fine-tuning all these connections. It’s making the circuit function in a much more efficient, synchronous way.”
Link
David Berson, professor of neuroscience at Brown University, found light exposure can enhance how well mice organize the nerve endings from their left eye and their right eye in an area of the brain where they start out somewhat jumbled. Findings are published in Nature Neuroscience.
Neuroscientists had thought that mammals were unable to see at this stage, but a new type of light-sensitive cell that Berson discovered a decade ago turns out to let in the light.
Meanwhile, Berson’s colleague Carlos Aizenman, assistant professor of neuroscience, co-authored a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience showing that newborn tadpoles depend on light to coordinate and improve the response speed, strength, and reliability of a network of neurons in a vision-processing region of their brains.
“This is how activity is allowing visual circuits to refine and sort themselves out,” says Aizenman. “Activity is fine-tuning all these connections. It’s making the circuit function in a much more efficient, synchronous way.”
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